Kenton’s low temperature sets Mesonet record

“One of our neighbors said last night that one of their pipes broke,” Jane Apple said of another problem being experienced in many areas of the state. “It’s hard to keep all the pipes thawed. You’ll think you’ve got them pretty well winterized and everything, and it freezes up.”

Besides ranching, the Apples rent cabins to tourists, and they are hoping those cabins don’t have frozen, broken pipes.

The reading of minus 19 degrees at 11 p.m. Wednesday at Kenton broke the Oklahoma Mesonet record of minus 15 degrees set on Dec. 8, 2005, at Kenton.

The Mesonet, which began in 1994, has 120 stations throughout Oklahoma.

The Nowata Mesonet station, in the northeast, reached a low actual temperature of minus 18 degrees at 8 a.m. Thursday.

In the Oklahoma City metro area, the Mesonet station at Guthrie had a low of minus 2, while Spencer dipped to minus 1 Thursday.

On Tuesday at Boise City, the wind chill was minus 36 degrees, the lowest wind chill recorded by a Mesonet station.

The Mesonet numbers are just records for that weather network. The coldest official actual temperatures recorded in Oklahoma were minus 27 degrees at Vinita on Feb. 13, 1905, and at Watts on Jan. 18, 1930.

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Bryan Painter, assistant local editor, has 31 years’ experience in journalism, including 22 years with the state's largest newspaper, The Oklahoman. In that time he has covered such events as the April 19, 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah...